Thank you, ultramar. You've assessed the situation very well and are spot on. At this point I really don't want a "career" anymore---just a job that I can handle, do good work every day, and leave at the door when it's time to go home. I don't want to get attached to people, I don't want to be responsible for and have so little authority over a large department, and I DEFINITELY don't want the 24/7/365 on-call status.

Yes, my stress levels were stratospheric during the last few months I worked at my last job, so the anxiety figured into this entire cluster F, big time. Unfortunately, it was all part of this massive mixed episode I've been in for weeks, which I didn't fully understand until yesterday when I finally got fed up with all the crying/anxiety/paranoia/irritability/agitation/crazy thinking/insomnia.

I called my pdoc and hollered for help. So he spent the next 20 minutes explaining this phenomenon---bless his heart, that was 20 minutes of free psychotherapy---and then told me to double up on my AP to help get the mania under control. I literally could not tell if I was manic or depressed, and was actually leaning toward depression because of the crying jags, but he said I was actually experiencing a dysphoric mania. Shows you what I know, LOL.